Rambam - Netflix

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Rambam - Judaism - Netflix

Judaism (originally from Hebrew יהודה‬, Yehudah, “Judah”; via Latin and
Greek) is the religion of the Jewish people. It is an ancient,
monotheistic, Abrahamic religion with the Torah as its foundational
text. It encompasses the religion, philosophy and culture of the Jewish
people. Judaism is considered by religious Jews to be the expression of
the covenant that God established with the Children of Israel. Judaism
includes a wide corpus of texts, practices, theological positions, and
forms of organization. The Torah is part of the larger text known as the
Tanakh or the Hebrew Bible, and supplemental oral tradition represented
by later texts such as the Midrash and the Talmud. With between 14.5 and
17.4 million adherents worldwide, Judaism is the tenth largest religion
in the world. Within Judaism there are a variety of movements, most of
which emerged from Rabbinic Judaism, which holds that God revealed his
laws and commandments to Moses on Mount Sinai in the form of both the
Written and Oral Torah. Historically, this assertion was challenged by
various groups such as the Sadducees and Hellenistic Judaism during the
Second Temple period; the Karaites and Sabbateans during the early and
later medieval period; and among segments of the modern non-Orthodox
denominations. Modern branches of Judaism such as Humanistic Judaism may
be nontheistic. Today, the largest Jewish religious movements are
Orthodox Judaism (Haredi Judaism and Modern Orthodox Judaism),
Conservative Judaism and Reform Judaism. Major sources of difference
between these groups are their approaches to Jewish law, the authority
of the Rabbinic tradition, and the significance of the State of Israel.
Orthodox Judaism maintains that the Torah and Jewish law are divine in
origin, eternal and unalterable, and that they should be strictly
followed. Conservative and Reform Judaism are more liberal, with
Conservative Judaism generally promoting a more “traditional”
interpretation of Judaism's requirements than Reform Judaism. A typical
Reform position is that Jewish law should be viewed as a set of general
guidelines rather than as a set of restrictions and obligations whose
observance is required of all Jews. Historically, special courts
enforced Jewish law; today, these courts still exist but the practice of
Judaism is mostly voluntary. Authority on theological and legal matters
is not vested in any one person or organization, but in the sacred texts
and rabbis and scholars who interpret them. The history of Judaism spans
more than 3,000 years. Judaism has its roots as a structured religion in
the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Judaism is considered one of the
oldest monotheistic religions. The Hebrews and Israelites were already
referred to as “Jews” in later books of the Tanakh such as the Book of
Esther, with the term Jews replacing the title “Children of Israel”.
Judaism's texts, traditions and values strongly influenced later
Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam and the Baha'i Faith.
Many aspects of Judaism have also directly or indirectly influenced
secular Western ethics and civil law. Hebraism is just as important a
factor in the development of Western civilization as Hellenism, and
Judaism, as the mother religion of Christianity, has considerably shaped
Western ideals and morality since the Christian Era. Jews are an
ethnoreligious group and include those born Jewish and converts to
Judaism. In 2015, the world Jewish population was estimated at about
14.3 million, or roughly 0.2% of the total world population. About 43%
of all Jews reside in Israel and another 43% reside in the United States
and Canada, with most of the remainder living in Europe, and other
minority groups spread throughout South America, Asia, Africa, and
Australia.

Rambam - Who is a Jew? - Netflix

According to Rabbinic Judaism, a Jew is anyone who was either born of a
Jewish mother or who converted to Judaism in accordance with Jewish Law.
Reconstructionist Judaism and the larger denominations of worldwide
Progressive Judaism (also known as Liberal or Reform Judaism) accept the
child as Jewish if one of the parents is Jewish, if the parents raise
the child with a Jewish identity, but not the smaller regional branches.
All mainstream forms of Judaism today are open to sincere converts,
although conversion has traditionally been discouraged since the time of
the Talmud. The conversion process is evaluated by an authority, and the
convert is examined on his or her sincerity and knowledge. Converts are
called “ben Abraham” or “bat Abraham”, (son or daughter of Abraham).
Conversions have on occasion been overturned. In 2008, Israel's highest
religious court invalidated the conversion of 40,000 Jews, mostly from
Russian immigrant families, even though they had been approved by an
Orthodox rabbi. Rabbinical Judaism maintains that a Jew, whether by
birth or conversion, is a Jew forever. Thus a Jew who claims to be an
atheist or converts to another religion is still considered by
traditional Judaism to be Jewish. According to some sources, the Reform
movement has maintained that a Jew who has converted to another religion
is no longer a Jew, and the Israeli Government has also taken that
stance after Supreme Court cases and statutes. However, the Reform
movement has indicated that this is not so cut and dried, and different
situations call for consideration and differing actions. For example,
Jews who have converted under duress may be permitted to return to
Judaism “without any action on their part but their desire to rejoin the
Jewish community” and “A proselyte who has become an apostate remains,
nevertheless, a Jew”. Karaite Judaism believes that Jewish identity can
only be transmitted by patrilineal descent. Although a minority of
modern Karaites believe that Jewish identity requires that both parents
be Jewish, and not only the father. They argue that only patrilineal
descent can transmit Jewish identity on the grounds that all descent in
the Torah went according to the male line. The question of what
determines Jewish identity in the State of Israel was given new impetus
when, in the 1950s, David Ben-Gurion requested opinions on mihu Yehudi
(“Who is a Jew”) from Jewish religious authorities and intellectuals
worldwide in order to settle citizenship questions. This is still not
settled, and occasionally resurfaces in Israeli politics. Historical
definitions of Jewish identity have traditionally been based on halakhic
definitions of matrilineal descent, and halakhic conversions. Historical
definitions of who is a Jew date back to the codification of the Oral
Torah into the Babylonian Talmud, around 200 CE. Interpretations of
sections of the Tanakh, such as Deuteronomy 7:1–5, by Jewish sages, are
used as a warning against intermarriage between Jews and Canaanites
because “[the non-Jewish husband] will cause your child to turn away
from Me and they will worship the gods (i.e., idols) of others.”
Leviticus 24:10 says that the son in a marriage between a Hebrew woman
and an Egyptian man is “of the community of Israel.” This is
complemented by Ezra 10:2–3, where Israelites returning from Babylon vow
to put aside their gentile wives and their children. A popular theory is
that the rape of Jewish women in captivity brought about the law of
Jewish identity being inherited through the maternal line, although
scholars challenge this theory citing the Talmudic establishment of the
law from the pre-exile period. Since the anti-religious Haskalah
movement of the late 18th and 19th centuries, halakhic interpretations
of Jewish identity have been challenged.